


Some Days You're The Hydrant

by gingasaur



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Animal Transformation, Dog(s), Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingasaur/pseuds/gingasaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's just something really goofy about you calling a dog 'sir'."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Days You're The Hydrant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adventurepants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventurepants/gifts).



> Happy ThanksmasValenbirthday to the most patient lady on Earth. Thanks to [missparker](http://archiveofourown.org/users/missparker/pseuds/missparker) for putting up with my crazy, and a special thank you to the popsicle joke that spawned all of this.

Sam shot a stern look at Daniel and Teal’c.

“Remember,” she warned. “ _Calm._ ”

Daniel’s eyes wandered. Teal’c raised an eyebrow. They weren’t going to be much help.

Turning back toward the event horizon, Sam let out a puff of air.

“Let’s get this over with,” she mumbled, and they all stepped through.

They didn’t bother strolling off the ramp; just moved away from the Stargate, listened to the wormhole disengage, and then waited. Sam tried not to wince as she watched General Hammond’s eyes scanning them from inside the control room. Then came that look of controlled alarm on his face, and he leaned into the microphone.

“SG-1,” he said, “where is Colonel O’Neill?”

And there it was. Sam breathed deep. Beside her, Daniel made a weird, slightly high-pitched noise under his breath that she was going to assume was concern instead of laughter. Teal’c, thankfully, said nothing and stayed very still on her left.

Right as she opened her mouth to speak, Sam saw movement out of the corner of her eye and froze. He was going to do it. He was going to do one of the measly two things she specifically asked him _not_ to do. She and Daniel and Teal’c could only watch as he trotted out from behind them and planted himself directly in front of them.

He glanced over his shoulder, stared Sam straight in the eye, and huffed once. Oh, she was going to kill him.

General Hammond’s voice drifted down from the control room again. “Major Carter, what is that?”

She couldn’t help but wince this time. Daniel coughed.

The dog in front of them wagged his tail before barking loudly. There was the _second_ thing she asked him not to do.

“That, sir,” she finally answered, “is Colonel O’Neill.”

He barked again. Sam shut her eyes.

\---

A dog in the briefing room. It wasn’t like it was the strangest thing to ever happen in there, but he’d taken a seat beside her like it was totally normal, like there was nothing weird at all about Sam Carter sitting next to a border collie at the conference table.

Except _everything_ was weird about it, and remembering it as she stood in the infirmary now was giving her a headache.

“So?” Sam asked. “How is he? Is he okay?”

Janet shrugged as she eyed an x-ray for the sixth time.

“As far as I can tell, he’s fine. All the tests came back clean.” She glanced over at the colonel, draped lazily over a pillow he’d pulled from the other end of the bed with his teeth. At least he looked comfortable. “And even without the DNA test,” Janet added with a smirk, “it’s not exactly hard to tell it’s him.”

The colonel’s tail twitched and his head came up, eyebrows furrowed as he stared, clearly miffed, at Janet. Maybe that was kind of funny. _Maybe._

“So,” Janet said, ignoring him tossing her folder onto another bed. “What’s the plan?”

Sam sighed softly and rubbed lightly at her temples. “To think of a plan.” Going back to P3X-992 would just be a waste of time; they’d probably never find their new “friends” again. With their giggly little voices and their bright pink hair and their utterly incomprehensible language that even Daniel could barely make heads or tails of, they’d quickly proven to be some of the most annoying aliens they’d ever met. And Sam didn’t say that lightly, but _God,_ they were really, truly annoying. And of course, the colonel hadn’t been shy about letting them know that, but they’d just giggled and squealed and jumped around like kindergarteners at recess. Sam still didn’t know whether or not their little good-bye gift to the colonel was meant to be a punishment or not. They probably didn’t have an angry bone in their gangly green bodies.

“Well,” Janet said, back straightened with the utmost confidence, “we’ll do our best to figure something out.”

“We will,” Sam replied. They always did.

They both turned to the colonel, now rolled over onto his back and pawing at the air in time with his swishing tail. He seemed blissfully unaware of his tongue poking out of his mouth.

Sam turned back to Janet and frowned. “We’d _better._ ”

\---

Getting to Sam’s lab should have been simple, “should have” being the operative words. It was truly astounding the number of professional Air Force officers reduced to gibbering teenagers at the sight of one energetic dog (and it’s not like they didn’t know it was Colonel O’Neill, meaning everyone from Reynolds to Siler was just messing with him.) The colonel, too, was practically possessed by the urge to stop and sniff _everything_. Sam tried to have sympathy for him, she really did, but after their seventh pause to allow the colonel to put his nose in some nondescript hallway corner, Sam pretty much dragged him the rest of the way.

She started running tests as soon as they made it inside. Exactly zero of them provided new information and only one nearly scorched his tail off. She thought that had to count for something, but judging from the way he would look at her and then slowly bring the charred tip of his tail into view, Colonel O’Neill didn’t share her opinion.

Despite the failures, two things did become clear during the course of the day: one, that not even Daniel’s morning dose of Benadryl could withstand two furry paws planted on his chest and a drooly tongue in his face, and two, that there was nowhere inside the base for a dog to relieve himself. No matter how hard they all tried, those stories about toilet-trained canines didn’t quite hold up in these admittedly unique circumstances, which was how SG-1 found themselves topside for the rest of the afternoon.

“Sam.”

She watched Daniel and the colonel’s bizarre, almost comical dance around each other. If the colonel so much as twitched in Daniel’s direction (which he did, frequently) Daniel’s whole body flinched and he jumped away.

“ _Sam,_ ” Daniel said again, right on the cusp of another sneeze.

“He’s probably antsy, Daniel,” Sam told him. “I’m sure it’ll be good for him to get some of that energy out.” She could use some of that energy herself, really; she was already exhausted and it wasn’t even 1700.

“He’s gonna _kill_ me!” Daniel exclaimed. “Why can’t you do this?”

Colonel O’Neill started hopping, all four paws leaving the ground in short jumps. Daniel took a good five steps in the opposite direction.

“O’Neill will not kill you, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said. “He is a dog.” There was that slight deviation in his tone, the one that - accompanied by the subtle twitching of the corners of his mouth - meant he was secretly laughing his ass off.

Daniel threw his hands up in the air. “Dogs kill people every single day!”

The colonel took this as his cue to start barking and tear after Daniel, who bolted across the grass, yelping and swearing as the colonel gleefully darted around his legs.

“Daniel Jackson’s running speed has become quite impressive,” Teal’c remarked with a smile.

Sam sighed, a little louder than she’d meant to. The smile faded from Teal’c’s face and he shifted to look at her. There was an awkward moment where Sam thought that maybe she could just continue watching Daniel flail around and try to keep his balance, but Teal’c’s eyes on her couldn’t be ignored.

“I just feel like I should have done more,” she finally said. “Back on 992, I mean.”

She heard crunching grass as Teal’c shifted further. “The people of that planet vanished before our eyes with no sign they had ever been there,” he said. “There was nothing you could have done, nor was there anything you could have ordered Daniel Jackson or myself to do.”

He was right, of course, but that did nothing to assuage the hefty amount of uncertainty she felt about it.

“We should have stayed longer,” Sam continued. “Should have looked around more, should have…” She put a stop to the dangerous amount of “should have”s coming out of her mouth. Finally looking up at Teal’c, she smiled a little regretfully. “It just seems like I had us leave without really doing anything, and now he’s stuck like this.”

Somehow, the colonel managed to leap paws-first onto Daniel’s back and he toppled face down into the grass. The colonel barked triumphantly, running in a circle around a very peevish and slightly muddy Daniel.

“You do not believe we will find a way to reverse O’Neill’s transformation?” Teal’c asked, concerned.

“No, we will,” Sam replied. “We will.” They had to.

Teal’c seemed to consider this for a moment before turning back to the rather circus-esque scene before them.

“You succeeded in keeping the rest of us from harm,” he said softly. “There was nothing unwise about leaving as quickly as we did.”

Nothing unwise about it aside from their complete lack of a solution.

Daniel - disheveled and with glasses slightly askew - hobbled toward them. Colonel O’Neill was right on his heels, looking very pleased with himself. He barked his victory and settled onto his haunches.

Daniel scowled. “He can’t stay here, and _I’m_ not taking him home.” His nose crinkled in the seconds before his next powerful sneeze.

All three of their gazes eventually settled on Sam. “What?” she asked, before realizing, “Oh. Right.” Teal’c couldn’t take him, seeing as how he lived on base, and Daniel’s allergies barred him from doing it even before his refusal. “Guess you’re coming home with me, sir,” she said to the colonel.

She really wasn’t sure about the noise he made then, but she was going to assume it was some form of gratitude.

\---

The sun was setting when they finally piled into her car. Colonel O’Neill hopped into the passenger seat and reached out with his paw for the seatbelt until he evidently remembered he was a dog and wasn’t going to get that belt around him without fingers. He growled deeply.

“Should I put the window down for you?” Sam realized a beat too late how insensitive it sounded. Luckily, he just looked at her and nodded towards the front of the car. _Drive,_ she imagined him saying, so she turned the key in the ignition without another word.

Most of the rush hour traffic had fizzled out, so the roads were clear enough for Sam to start getting antsy and crave speed and warm wind whipping at her hair. But if she was going to open her window, she should open his, too, and now that was way too awkward to even think about. She sighed, settled back into her seat, and the engine hummed as she pressed the accelerator down a little harder.

She never did buckle him in, so she stole a glance at him to see how he was doing. His paws were planted firmly on the seat, his nose inches away from the window (she could tell him not to leave greasy little nose prints, but that would be awkward, too.) He seemed entranced by the greens and grays and browns rushing by them and she wondered if they looked dull and desaturated to him now. Maybe he was just trying to save her from having to talk to him, or trying to save himself from having to listen when he couldn’t say anything in return.

She was about to fiddle with the air conditioning when she heard a small scraping sound and she glanced back at him. He pawed persistently at the control panel on the door, nails clicking against the hard plastic as he tried to… do something. It was a little hard to tell which button he was trying to push while attempting to keep her eyes on the road, but he eventually abandoned it and let out a short, deliberate ruff.

He stared at her and ruffed again, so she said, “What? Do we need to pull over?” Lord knew the last thing she wanted in this car was the fragrant aroma of dog pee.

Two woofs were his reply as he scraped anew at the mystery button.

“I can’t tell which one that is.”

He turned and bumped the top of his head against the window once, twice, three times.

“You _do_ want the window down,” she guessed.

Three ruffs, each more energetic than the last. She chuckled a bit, relieved and encouraged by their successful communication, and hit the button on her side.

He put his paws up on the window frame – tentatively at first – and stuck out his snout, sniffing lightly at the air. It didn’t take long for him to scoot forward, inching his head out into the wind. Fur ruffling and ears flapping, he squinted against the air and licked his nose until his jaw fell open, and as he panted into the breeze, it almost looked like he was smiling.

Sam grinned, brought down her window, and inhaled the sweet rush of air.

\---

In a way, it was like he was here for team night: he trotted down the hallway and into the kitchen, she tossed her keys onto the counter, and then she looked down to see him sniffing things again. Team night this wasn’t.

“Just don’t mark any territory,” she told him, grimacing. His ears shot up and he gave her the most affronted, wide-eyed look she’d seen from him yet. “Well, we don’t know how much control you have over…” She gestured hopelessly as she struggled for words. “I don’t know. Random dog compulsions.”

The colonel turned back to the side of the couch he’d so eagerly shoved his nose into and slowly, slowly backed away from it. He shook his head as if trying to work himself out of a daze, which, all things considered, he probably was. That was weird to think about. On so very many levels.

“You hungry?” Sam asked, a deliberate change of subject. The colonel’s ears shot up again and he closed the distance between them awfully fast, so she was going to take that as a “yes.”

Except, she looked in the fridge and immediately realized, “Oh. But. You can’t eat any of this stuff.”

His ears fell and he grunted, actually tilting his head to the side in confusion.

“Well, come on, all the crap _you_ eat? You’d die from that now.”

He grunted again, although it sounded a lot more like a growl this time.

“Okay, you can still get away with chicken and beef, I’m sure, but I’m gonna go grab some dog food.” Sam snatched up her keys and the sound she heard behind her was nothing short of a snarl from the fiery depths of hell. He capped it off with one loud, deep bark.

She whirled around and the look she gave him made him blink and straighten, at least.

“First of all, _sir,_ please don’t _snarl_ at me. Second of all, we have _no_ idea how your body will react to anything now. Dog food is the safest bet.”

He opened his mouth, but she stopped him with another, even stronger, “ _Sir._ ” He deflated, and she sighed. “Please. Just… don’t touch anything. I’ll be back.”

Even though she drove to the nearest supermarket at speeds that broke a few laws of nature, not to mention the speed limit, she figured she could breathe easy; there wasn’t really any food for him to get into - and he _would_ get into it, no matter what she told him, because this was the same man who did nothing but cheat on easy crossword puzzles. However, a few recent all-nighters on base meant she hadn’t stocked the pantry in a while and there wasn’t any chocolate lying around anywhere, so she gave herself some time to calmly sort through the swarm of choices. There were certainly a lot of choices. Dry, wet, Iams, Purina and everything in between; it had never been this bad buying for Schrodinger.

It was halfway through her decision between chicken in gravy or turkey and rice that she remembered the brown bag on the counter, tucked into the corner near the fridge. The brown bag full of four raspberry bars, ten peanut butter cookies, and one banana nut muffin: all the treats Cassie talked her into buying at her school’s bake sale last weekend.

All the treats that were in grave, imminent danger.

Sam grabbed a couple of cans, barely taking the time to check that she was actually picking up dog food, and bolted back home.

She could already see it when she walked in the door: a bit of crumpled plastic near one of the counter chairs. That could mean anything, she insisted, anything at all. Maybe she’d dropped something on her way out the door. Maybe the colonel found it and played around with it in a fit of boredom. Maybe-

She stopped when she saw the crumbs, the brown shreds of paper bag, the little smears of red on the floor. There was a trail. Dear God, there was a trail. As she slowly followed it around the island, the volume of crumbs and streaks increased, varying in size and color and sending any hope she may have harbored about this situation crashing to the pit of her stomach.

She found the muffin at the division between the kitchen and the den. He hadn’t liked the muffin, apparently, since it remained mostly intact aside from the large chunk missing from its top. He’d certainly enjoyed the cookies, though.

A fuzzy black tail poked out from behind the couch. She wet her lips and took a deep breath.

“I see you helped yourself to some snacks, sir.”

He looked absolutely pitiful, sprawled out on his side between the couch and the coffee table. He barely twitched at the sound of her voice and whined pathetically in short little bursts.

She placed her hands on her hips. “You couldn’t hit a button to put down your window, but you found a way to tear open that bag?”

He whined louder. She resisted rolling her eyes and moved to sit on the couch, but stopped when his whines became a little… stranger. Deeper. Like he was groaning, like he was about to-

“Oh, God. Get up,” she said. “ _Get up_ , sir; don’t do this all over the carpet, _please._ ”

The colonel staggered to his feet and his head did a hideous lurching thing and holy crap, she needed to get him out of the house right now. She made a beeline for the door to the backyard and opened it, and he wobbled toward her on shaky legs and she hoped and prayed that she wasn’t going to have to carry him the rest of the way out.

He just barely made it onto the grass when his little feast returned to the world from whence it came. Sam sighed with relief and cringed simultaneously.

She gave him a few minutes, trying not to concentrate on the sound of him retching all over the backyard. When it seemed to die down and the only things she could hear were the rustling of leaves and the tweeting of birds, she carefully stepped outside.

He was lying on his stomach near the fence at the back of the yard. Already he looked a little healthier, although his breathing was hard and he still let out the occasional low whine. She gingerly sat down next to him and he watched her, eyes sharp, like he expected her to scold him. She couldn’t say she wasn’t tempted.

Instead, Sam just quietly sighed and reached out, hand hovering over him for a few moments before she gave him a few light pats.

“Nnnf,” he said, and she began to rub his back. His eyelids fluttered shut and he exhaled as if a detonator just stopped ticking.

“Bet that dog food’s sounding better and better,” Sam said.

“ _Nnnnnnf,_ ” the colonel replied, rolling over onto his side.

\---

There wasn’t anything for him to do here.

Sam had settled down with some innocuous paperwork while the colonel continued to wander around the house, but it didn’t take long for him to come back to the couch and fire off a short groan. His tail drooped, his head was low, and his pent-up frustration was blazingly clear.

Sam dropped her notes onto the coffee table. “Do you want to go anywhere?” she offered.

He made that same humdrum sound and shook his head.

“Want to read some old reports?” She gestured toward the papers on the table, and he shook his head emphatically at that.

Before she could make another suggestion, he went up to the table and eyed the television remotes. He pushed against one with his nose for a bit, clearly struggling with it, but he kept it up until he managed to angle his head so he could clamp his teeth down onto the plastic.

He came back around to the couch, the remote held firmly in his mouth, and gave Sam an expectant look as he dumped it into her lap, slobber and all.

She carefully plucked the dry end of the remote off of her jeans.

“Okay,” she said. “You could have just… pointed to it.” She wiped the drool away with her sleeve.

He hopped up onto the other side of the couch, settling in and kneading the cushions a little as Sam flipped through some channels. She came across a hockey game eventually, and Colonel O’Neill was quite vocal about his desire to watch it, so she left it on for him and took her papers to the kitchen.

At first she thought something was wrong, seriously wrong, what with the horrifically pained growls and moans coming out of his mouth. The periodic audience cheering and the droning of the buzzer were masked only by the colonel’s deathly howls, and when she darted back to the couch, she found him lying down with his paws over his eyes.

It wasn’t until she glanced at the TV and saw the very wide point margin that she finally understood.

“Not going so well, I take it,” she said.

His bizarre, drawn-out, “Aaaroooof,” almost made her laugh right there.

She left him alone for the rest of the game and when the final buzzer went off (accompanied, of course, by one last miserable groan,) Sam returned to the couch. The colonel was on his back now, tongue half-heartedly flopping out of his mouth while he sighed dramatically. Holding back a snort of laughter was impossible.

It felt late, but that probably spoke more to how tired she was than to the actual time. After turning the TV off and depositing the remote back into its usual spot, Sam let her head flop against the back of the couch and shut her eyes.

Just before she could mentally unload the semi truck of worry she’d lugged home with her, she heard the colonel shifting and then, suddenly, there was a hint of weight on her thigh. Looking down, she found his head in her lap and big puppy eyes staring back at her. Weird, funny, then straight back to weird.

“Wow,” she said, immediately wishing she could take it back.

His breath tickled the back of her hand as he huffed dejectedly.

He was tired, too; she could see that now, and he averted his gaze, staring ahead at a pillow as he huffed again. His ear was twitching, she noticed, and that was a little odd.

“Are you all right, sir?” she asked. The twitching increased to more of a flapping, and Sam stilled it with her fingers.

“Sir?” she asked again.

He was angling his head now, moving it just enough so that her fingertips rubbed against his ear, and then he subtly shifted to get her nails.

She frowned. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

He stopped. His head came up and he stared at her again with those big eyes.

“I am _not_ going to scratch behind your ears,” Sam declared. “No way.”

He whimpered, a decidedly grumpy sound. He laid his head back down, huffed for a third time, and then had the gall to edge his head a little closer to her hands.

She drew in a breath, held it for a moment, and let her sigh be as long and inconvenienced as possible. “Does it _really_ itch?”

Again with the eyes. Anyone else would find this insulting.

She shook her head, rolled her eyes, and surrendered to this utterly pathetic display of blatant begging. “Stay still,” she told him, and he settled in with a pleased grunt as she began to lightly scratch behind his right ear.

“You’re enjoying being a dog, aren’t you?” She scratched a little harder. “You’re actually enjoying it.”

He licked his nose. How very shameless of him.

She scratched and scratched and he lay there, languid and lazy, as she fell into a rather comforting rhythm with it. It seemed to calm him further until his leg twitched and his tail floated down like a feather to the cushion and eventually, he wasn’t moving at all.

He wasn’t moving, and he’d actually fallen asleep. Incredible.

“Well, then, sir,” Sam whispered. “If you don’t mind…” She carefully lifted his head enough for her to slip out from under him and then smoothly deposited him back onto the couch without a sound. He didn’t stir, just continued to breathe heavily and evenly, and she took the blanket from the back of the couch.

As she draped it over him, she murmured, “It won’t be like this forever,” and hoped that she was right.

\---

The first time he woke her up, she had no idea what was going on and groped in the darkness for her gun until those ears and that tail finally came into focus.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked, and the colonel replied with a whine so high-pitched it sounded like an alarm. It may as well have been an alarm, since he was teetering back and forth and fidgeting like a little boy who really needed to go to the-

She swore under her breath and threw off the covers.

Sam opened the backyard door and he scampered out, no hesitation. Not that she really blamed him. It started to settle in then, the sense of how truly aggravating and unsettling this must be for a man who thrived on being in control. She quietly leaned against the door frame as she waited for him.

He plunked himself in the middle of the yard and looked at her over his shoulder. She stared back at him.

He barked suddenly, low and growly and a little bit indignant.

Sam jumped as she realized she was standing there watching him, watching him try to pee, and she swore under her breath a few more times as she quickly apologized and turned around.

She ran a hand over her face and tried not to look at the clock.

The second time he woke her up, she groaned openly and muttered, “Again?”

He just whined, and off to the backyard they went. She remembered to turn around this time.

The third time, she let him out and then immediately rummaged through some kitchen drawers and a few containers in the garage. When he strolled back inside and found her, she already had a wrench in her mouth and some string looped around her wrist.

“We won’t have to do this again,” she said, eyes bright with swirling ideas and running calculations.

He tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. She got to work.

It only took her 20 minutes to rig together a pulley system that would allow him to open the door on his own. A little weight here, some string there, and they hopefully had a foolproof solution to their problem.

“Try it,” she said.

He did, and the door opened and closed easily. They both breathed out in unison.

“I’m going back to bed,” Sam said, and the colonel wandered back to the couch with an acknowledging woof.

As she approached the end of the kitchen, the colonel barked once, and she swiveled back around. He had his paws up on the back of the couch, tail wagging as he looked at her. He ruffed softly two times.

The way he did it, there was a small “oo” sound at the end of the second ruff. It almost, _almost_ sounded like he said, “Thank you.”

Sam smiled. “You’re welcome,” she said, and turned off the lights. “Good night, sir.”

She waited until the sounds of him settling back down onto the couch subsided before she left.

\---

“You look like hell.”

Had Daniel neglected to push a steaming cup of coffee toward her while he said that, Sam might have punched him. Hard. But the coffee smelled lovely and her irritation melted at the sight of Daniel’s soft, supporting smile.

“Long night,” Sam replied, bringing the cup to her lips and inhaling the scent of pure, powerful caffeine. “Have you and Teal’c found anything?”

Daniel looked down and that told her all she needed to know. “Nope,” he confirmed, “and before you ask, we still haven’t heard back from Thor yet, either.”

Sam nodded and set the coffee down. They all knew trying to get in touch with Thor would be a long shot right now, but she was really starting to hope for an answer from him, if only because she wasn’t finding any herself.

“How’s he doing?” Daniel motioned toward the colonel, who had picked the seats of two rolling chairs locked in place next to each other as his lounging spot of choice today.

Sam frowned. “Don’t talk about him like he’s not here.”

Daniel’s mouth fell open slightly. “What?” He shrugged, affronted. “I’m just- It’s not like he can-”

He quickly relented, pursed his lips together, and faced the colonel’s direction. “How you doing, Jack?”

“Rrrrnf.” He didn’t even lift his head to look at him.

Daniel turned back to Sam and shrugged.

“He’s bored,” she said.

“Ah, don’t talk about him like he’s not here,” Daniel teased. Sam smacked him lightly on the arm.

“So,” Daniel began as Sam fixed her attention on her laptop again. She’d been staring at the same graphs and diagrams and page-long calculations for hours and it was all starting to blur.

She pushed off and out of her chair without preamble, lightly grabbing Daniel’s sleeve. “Come on,” she said, suddenly seized by the urge to just… not be here. To not be getting headaches from staring at problems that weren’t coughing up solutions, to not be putting the colonel through tedious tests she already suspected wouldn’t succeed.

Daniel didn’t question his suddenly being dragged from the room, just said, “Oh,” and went with it. Behind them, Colonel O’Neill grumbled what sounded like a question.

“We’ll be right back, sir,” Sam told him, and Daniel snickered. “What?”

Daniel shook his head. “There’s just something really goofy about you calling a dog ‘sir’.”

The colonel, still draped across the chairs, barked sharply and growled while Sam glared daggers. Daniel at least had the decency to clear his throat.

Sam didn’t stop walking when they left the lab, just kept going and going until they reached her quarters. She very nearly shoved Daniel inside and closed the door, leaning against it and exhaling.

“Sam?” The concern was already clear in Daniel’s voice, the beginnings of fear evident on his face. “What happened? Is there something wrong with him?”

“No, no, he’s fine.” Sam sighed again, then laughed and ran a hand through her hair. “I just don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

“That’s never stopped you before,” Daniel said with a smile, and it was contagious.

“It’s just that there’s no data to go on,” Sam continued, feeling her smile waver already. “We have _nothing_ , Daniel. We have nothing and I’m running out of things to try and he hates having to sit through every single test, he _hates_ it.”

“He’d hate it no matter what,” Daniel said. “He’s Jack.”

That much was absolutely certain. Sam allowed herself a calming breath.

“I really want to get this figured out,” she said.

“Me, too,” Daniel replied, entirely serious.

The built-up tension seeped out of her shoulders slowly, not leaving completely, but lessening at the very least.

“Sam,” Daniel said gently. She looked up, and he was smiling softly again. “It’s only day two. Give yourself a break.”

She chuckled. “Because I’ve always been good at that.”

“Eh,” Daniel said mid-shrug. “We’ll keep working on it.”

Sam ducked her head and smiled wider. Just as she was about to turn around, there were two firm knocks at the door, which could only mean…

“Major Carter,” Teal’c said after she’d opened the door. “Daniel Jackson.” Colonel O’Neill stood by his feet and announced his presence with a small ruff. In Teal’c’s hands was a smattering of what appeared to be brightly-colored and oddly-shaped plastic toys. He took one in his hand and squeezed it, causing it to emit a high-pitched squeal that made the colonel’s ears jerk.

“Doctor Fraiser believes these will prove beneficial for O’Neill,” Teal’c stated. He paused, contemplating the polka-dotted ball in his hand. “Although I suspect she simply wants to watch him chase the ‘squeaky ball’.”

The colonel ruffed twice, eyebrows furrowed in a grumpy glare. Sam and Daniel both couldn’t help snickering at that and grinned at each other.

“Well, then,” Sam said to all three of them. “Shall we?”

The colonel’s three woofs accompanied them down the hall.

\---

They fell into routines quickly: tests in the morning and right after lunch, topside “adventures” in the afternoon (and they were adventures: the colonel’s tendency to tackle Daniel to the ground over and over again made sure of that,) and then back to Sam’s house at night.

She insisted on keeping him on the dog food even though she knew he was going to the commissary to get some real chow. He’d stroll out of the lab around noon and return about half an hour later licking his chops. It was really quite brazen of him and he made no attempt to hide it. He probably didn’t even have to beg, either; she entertained visions of him waiting in line with everyone else and scoring a few hot dogs for his trouble, and staring up at Walter until he got freaked out enough to pass down little pieces of pie.

The backyard door pulley worked well and they both slept better for it. The colonel also seemed to be comfortable on the couch and took to dragging the blanket over himself as much as he could before settling down and dozing off. Sam would adjust it for him a bit before she went to bed and in the morning, her alarm would go off and the colonel would be right there, ready and willing to start another day without complaint.

Sam ran out of tests to perform in the middle of day four. It was a rather abrupt realization and her face paled as it occurred to her that she and the rest of the science team had nothing more to try.

The colonel noticed, and a long moment went by where they did nothing except stare at each other. He eventually put his head back down and looked away, and she wasn’t sure what that meant.

Daniel said, “We’ll try contacting Thor again,” when Sam told him, and Teal’c just put a hand on her shoulder.

“There is still time,” he said, and she nodded in return.

Colonel O’Neill was silent on the ride home and so was Sam, and when they walked in the door, she turned on the TV and left him alone for most of the night. When she put out his usual serving of dog food, he just sniffed it once, silently ate it, and returned to the couch.

Sam slept fitfully that night, tossing and turning and getting up for water and finding notepads to jot down the occasional farfetched idea. Somewhere in the middle of all that, she managed to conk out for a few hours and when she awoke - long before sunrise - she heard something that sounded like a pillow being fluffed, along with a small sigh.

She found the colonel curled up on both of the couch pillows at the foot of her bed. He stopped mid-fidget and looked up at her.

Something caught in her chest, aching and just a little raw.

“We’ll fix this,” she said.

She wanted to promise it, she really did, but they both knew better than to make promises.

\---

It wasn’t simple anxiety that plagued her anymore, not just a strained eagerness to find the missing piece to the puzzle so they could all move on with their lives. It was more like fear now, sharp and cold and ever-present. She’d become highly aware of a little black marble of doubt rolling around in the pit of her stomach, telling her to hurry up, mocking her, becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Getting called to General Hammond’s office wasn’t making it roll around any less.

“How’s it coming, Major?”

She’d seen the look on his face dozens of times before: quiet, ever-so-slightly detached, already resigned to words he didn’t want to say.

She didn’t mean to hesitate, but it happened anyway. “We, um. We’re still working.” It felt flat and useless and did nothing to take that resigned expression off the general’s face.

Hammond nodded slowly. Sam straightened, watching him not look at her, watching the wheels turning in his head.

She knew what was coming. She knew.

“Major,” he finally said, “you know what I’m about to say doesn’t come lightly.”

Sam nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s been almost six days without any signs of improvement.”

It wasn’t like she hadn’t been counting to the minute, to the second. “Yes, sir,” she said again.

Hammond exhaled slowly and met her eyes. “I trust you’re thinking about a replacement.”

She was thinking about it: thinking about how much she didn’t want to have to pick one. “Yes, sir.” She thought she sounded like a machine by now, just parroting the same programmed answer.

“It’s just that with the Replicators running around, and now Anubis, not to mention the rest of the Goa’uld, I need every team functioning at peak efficiency.”

“I understand,” Sam said.

Hammond unclasped his hands from across his stomach and sat forward. “There’s no rule that says an SG team has to have four people. If you feel ready to take command, I’ll have no trouble authorizing it.”

This was never, ever the way she wanted to be in command of anything.

The general’s gaze softened. “I want Colonel O’Neill back to normal just as much as you do.”

Of that she had no doubt.

“I’ll give you as much time as I possibly can on this.” Sam had no doubt about that, either, but it wasn’t easing the tight squeeze in her chest. “Dismissed.”

She thanked him and left, and immediately decided to grab Daniel and Teal’c early.

Their time topside went too quickly, the sun zooming through the sky as if to spite her. Teal’c stood with her, both of them watching Colonel O’Neill relish his almost carefree pursuit of Daniel, and Sam said nothing, just watched them and toyed with fleeting thoughts about what this might be like if it were permanent.

By the time she and the colonel made it home, she was so nauseous that she could barely look at her dinner, let alone eat it. She rested her chin against her hand and absentmindedly fed little pieces of pasta to the colonel under the table.

The fact that she fed him real food was a dead giveaway, and he stared at her and didn’t stop staring until she looked at him. He held his head a little higher tonight and his tail wagged less, and she had a feeling he knew, somehow.

“I’m not giving up,” she told him.

He looked back at her like he knew that, too.

\---

She woke up gasping for breath that night, startled into consciousness by nightmares that hadn’t haunted her for months. It took her a little longer than it usually did to remember she was fine, that Jolinar didn’t live here anymore, and she ran a hand over her face to try to even out her shaking breaths.

Her blood buzzed in her veins, still high from the rush of putting out her palm and forcing out the power to rip men in half. She shut her eyes against the memory - _her_ memory, not Jolinar’s. Her stomach flipped and she turned over.

She was startled to find Colonel O’Neill right there near the edge of her bed, far enough away to provide some respectable distance, but still close enough that she could see his eyes, shining in the little streaks of moonlight coming through the blinds.

“Did I wake you up?” His ears stood at attention; she must have made quite the racket for his newly sensitive hearing. “Sorry,” she murmured.

He made a sound, a cross between a grunt and a whimper, and stepped a little closer.

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “Go back to sleep.” It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d seen her awaken from a nightmare. But then, it was different in a tent off-world.

The colonel quietly continued to stare at her. She shifted and let her hand hang over the side of the bed.

“Jolinar,” she finally admitted. “Sometimes I still…” She licked her lips, trying to form words when she knew full well there were none. Eventually, she stopped pushing and breathed out lightly before she said, “Really, I’m okay. Go back to sleep.”

She watched him watching her for a few moments and he didn’t move. She was about to turn over again when he cautiously approached, lightly bumping his nose against her hand. When she didn’t respond, he did it again, harder this time, and she felt his tongue dart out to lick her fingers.

Sam’s throat tightened. She tried to laugh as she reached out to ruffle his fur, but her smile wavered and her breath shuddered. He looked alarmed and stopped and she shook her head.

“This is just…” She took a few slow breaths, shutting her eyes for a moment to regain some composure. It wouldn’t do any good for her to cry about it and she certainly wasn’t going to do it in front of him. “I thought we’d have found something by now.”

She smoothed out the fur on the colonel’s head and he kept his eyes on her in silence. “I mean, this should have been a joke, but… Now I’m just afraid we’re not going to-”

The colonel stepped back, giving her a moment to take another breath and run a hand over her face.

“We need to sleep,” she finally said, but when she opened her eyes and took her hand away from her face, the colonel was gone. Then, behind her, the bed dipped slightly and when she turned her head, she was surprised to suddenly find him _on_ the bed.

Sam blinked. “Sir.”

She was about to make a quip about dog hair all over the sheets, but the colonel just settled himself down, curling up with his side pressed up against her legs. There were no whimpers, no puppy eyes, no nothing: just him being right there, solid and steady and warm.

Sam reached down and gave him a few gentle scratches behind the ears before she allowed her eyelids to slip shut.

\---

“No. I’m not doing it today.” Daniel stood with his arms folded across his chest. “I’m done being the chew toy; it’s someone else’s turn.”

The colonel approached him, puppy eyes at full strength.

“Oh, that’s just pathetic,” Daniel said.

The colonel’s expression became decidedly less innocent. His tail wagged impishly.

“No! I’m serious; I’m not doing this!” The colonel took a few steps toward him, and he backed off with an, “Ah!” on each step. He then gestured toward Teal’c and Sam. “Anytime you want to help me out here.”

“Very well,” Teal’c said. “I will be the one to entertain O’Neill.” He bent down and lifted the colonel completely off the ground, one arm supporting his stomach while the other rested on his back to keep him still. He yelped in surprise and started wiggling, legs flailing like he was trying to paddle through water.

“Do not worry, O’Neill.” Teal’c smiled, and there was a pretty good chance it was entirely mischievous. “We will have fun.”

The colonel looked from Sam to Daniel, eyes full of nothing but terror.

Daniel waved, smiling as he did. “Have a good time.”

Sam just sighed as Teal’c carried her struggling CO away.

It was a nice day. Sun warmed their faces, a few puffy clouds floated in the sky, and a light breeze rustled the grass and whisked some of the heat away.

It was hard not to get wistful on a day like this. She was fully aware of how she stared at Teal’c and the colonel like she was losing something, but she couldn’t stop it and didn’t really try.

Daniel nudging her lightly with his shoulder finally snapped her out of it. “Earth to Sam,” he said, and she smiled.

He continued to watch her, clearly waiting for her to say what was on her mind, but there were a lot of things on her mind and although she knew it would be useless and cruel to try to hide them from him, she didn’t quite know where to start.

Sam reached over, lightly curling her fingers around Daniel’s, and he gently took her hand into his own and squeezed it. He didn’t say anything after that, which was nice, but she felt the press of urgent words against her chest and took in a breath.

“How would you feel about me leading the team?” The words reverberated a bit; it was so, so surreal to actually be saying them to another person.

She felt him looking at her again, thought she spied his mouth opening and closing out of the corner of her eye. Finally, he said, “You can’t be telling me it’s come to that already. It’s only been six days.”

“I’m just… considering all the possibilities.”

“And how likely is this one?”

Sam let go of his hand and looked down at the grass.

“ _Sam,_ ” Daniel said, sounding just the slightest bit desperate.

She cut him off with a, “Daniel, please,” and turned her gaze skyward. “Don’t.”

They lapsed into uncomfortable silence. Daniel fidgeted quite a bit, but he refrained from saying anything and Sam was grateful for it. She watched as Teal’c picked up one of the yellow rubber balls and studied it for a moment before throwing it hard. It seemed to be a little _too_ hard, since it shrunk into a tiny speck as it disappeared behind a cluster of distant trees. Colonel O’Neill’s tail froze, and he turned to stare at Teal’c before barking his displeasure.

“We have to keep looking,” Daniel said eventually.

“I know,” Sam replied. “We will. We are.”

Teal’c bent down to pick up another ball, the big squishy red one, but the colonel bounded toward it, clamping his jaws down on it and dragging it backwards with a growl.

Daniel stepped closer to Sam, just enough so that their sleeves brushed a bit.

“If it’s a choice between you or somebody else,” he began, “then that’s not even a choice.”

When she looked at him, he was smiling, and she breathed out what felt like a mountain of anxiety. She grabbed his hand again, squeezed tightly, and listened to the rustling of the grass.

\---

She sat with the colonel on the couch that night. There was another hockey game on, but it didn’t appear to be holding his interest, so he edged over and settled his chin onto her lap. She scratched behind his ears without question.

After a few minutes of absent-minded scratching, she muted the game and looked down at him.

“General Hammond wants me to start thinking about a replacement,” she quietly said. “Just in case.”

He met her gaze for a few moments, blinking a couple of times before looking away.

“I just thought you should know,” she said. The colonel didn’t make a sound. Her fingertips had gotten a little tingly from all the scratching, so she started gently petting the top of his head instead. She couldn’t really tell how he felt about it, but he didn’t move.

“I have no idea who I’d pick,” Sam mused, more to herself than to him. There was an unspoken _because no one could replace you_ lurking underneath, but she was pretty sure he knew that already, knew that Daniel and Teal’c felt the same way.

It was just so unfair, every last bit of it.

As she continued petting him, she said, “General Hammond also said I could just take the team, but…” But she could be totally unqualified for it, but they could be at a total disadvantage as a trio, but, but, but. She tried not to dwell too much on her ongoing list of doubts.

The colonel twitched under her hand and raised his head before coming to a sitting position. He quickly, almost frantically, climbed up onto her lap, all four paws planted against her legs as his tail wagged with an odd amount of strength and he stared very deliberately into her face.

“What?” she asked, leaning back a little.

The colonel ruffed quietly. This was going to be one hell of a guessing game.

“I don’t... Is this about picking someone else?”

He ruffed twice, a little louder this time, and shook his head.

“ _Not_ picking someone else?” Sam guessed next, and the colonel ruffed three times as he nodded. He shifted, trying to keep his balance on her as his tail wagged wildly.

“You don’t want us to pick someone else?”

His tail wagged even faster, and then he simply leaned forward, bonking the top of his head against her chin. It caught her off guard at first, and then he did it again and again and was about to do it a fourth time, except it was so bizarre that Sam just stopped him with her hand.

“Okay, okay, that’s not working; I have no idea what that means.”

He seemed to be thinking hard, licking his nose as he contemplated his next move.

“So you _don’t_ want us to pick someone else,” Sam began, trying to help him out, and then as soon as she said the words, everything clicked.

He was pawing lightly at her sleeve now, getting about halfway up her arm before he just left his paw there for as long as he could. When he would slip, he’d put it right back up again and stare at her intently.

“Sir,” Sam said, her voice coming out far softer than she’d intended. “Are you handing command of SG-1 over to me?”

He barked many, many times, and even bumped his head against her chin one last time for extra clarity.

She swallowed hard.

“This is weird,” she eventually said.

He shook his head.

“Not weird?”

He pawed at her sleeve a little more. She grinned.

When they were tired enough for sleep, the colonel clambered back up onto her bed, nestled himself against her legs again, and she let him. She also let him scoot a little closer, just enough to reach out with his paw, nails brushing against her fingers.

The last thing Sam remembered before the weight of her eyelids became too much to bear was her palm coming to rest above the colonel’s paw.

\---

She dreamed of waking up in the morning to a very cramped bed. The colonel was still pressed up against her, dozing peacefully, and her own back was jammed against a tiger. It should have been cause for quite a bit of concern, the fact that a fully grown tiger was taking up more than half of her bed, but he licked his huge paw indifferently and sported a bald spot in the middle of his forehead that looked an awful lot like the symbol of Apophis. Add to that the little green parakeet fluttering around the room with black circles resembling a pair of glasses around his eyes, and Sam was fairly certain she was the only human member of SG-1 left.

“I need to get up,” she tried to say, but it came out as a meow and when she looked down at her hands, she was shocked to find they’d become little orange and white paws.

She jerked awake (for real, this time) and immediately checked her hands for fingers. Even through bleary post-dream vision, she could see that all ten were there and sighed gratefully.

Her alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but the sun was already up. Her senses stirred at the presence of warm, golden light breaking through the blinds and that was all it took to bring an end to sleep. She stretched cautiously, being careful not to disturb the colonel, whose breaths remained heavy with slumber behind her. He must have shifted around during the night, maybe stretched himself out on his side of the bed, because the weight felt different and it almost felt like there was more of him.

But that would be silly, she thought as she started to turn toward him, because that would mean that in the middle of the night, he’d just up and turned back into a-

She stopped mid-turn and swallowed a startled cough.

He mumbled something in his sleep and shifted, his hand ( _hand_ , not paw) coming to rest mere inches from her arm.

She must have lost a vital circuit somewhere in the depths of her brain, because she was just staring open-mouthed at him, all six very human feet of him, and was caught between shock and relief and confusion and joy at seeing him whole again.

But unfortunately, as her gaze traveled south, she discovered that even though he’d returned to normal sometime during the night, he’d done so sans clothing.

“Oh,” Sam muttered. “Oh, boy.” It wasn’t as if SG-1 weren’t fully acquainted with one another’s bodies after years of wacky outfits and even wackier civilization rituals, but waking up to her completely naked commanding officer sleeping on her bed was another matter entirely.

She tried her best to slide away soundlessly, because there were just _so_ many ways this was going to be uncomfortable if she didn’t at least drape a sheet over him before he woke up, but she’d barely made it out from under the covers when he stirred.

“Mmmf,” he mumbled (was he even aware he’d changed back?) and then she heard a few joints pop as he stretched. “Morning, Carter.”

Okay. She had to turn around now. If she didn’t, it’d be even weirder.

“Good morning, sir,” she replied, being very careful to keep her eyes on his face. He still looked half-asleep.

“Think today’ll be the day?” he asked her.

“The… day for what?”

“The day where I get to stop having this damn tail following me around every-”

Sam bit her lip and watched his face as it sank in. He looked excited at first, and then he looked down at himself, confused. Then he looked back up at her… and then back down at himself.

He grabbed the end of the comforter closest to her and flipped it over the lower half of his body.

“I’m just gonna…” Sam motioned toward the door. The colonel nodded rather vehemently.

She made it out only to realize that any clothes she had to give him were in her room, but then, nothing she had would fit him, so what did it matter anyway?

There was only one option here, and he wasn’t going to like it.

She pressed the phone to her ear and kept her voice low. “Daniel.”

He made a drowsy sound. “S’early.”

“I know, but Daniel, listen. I need you to do something for me.”

“Mmm.”

Sam frowned. “Are you really listening?”

“Yes, yes, geez!”

“Okay.” She looked back down the hall toward her bedroom. There were shuffling noises coming from inside. “I need you to go to Colonel O’Neill’s house, get him some clothes, and then come over here.”

There was silence on the other end.

“ _Daniel._ ”

“Okay,” he said warily. “But why?”

She didn’t have to explain it to him, but she did have to listen to him go through the stages of jubilation, bafflement, and then, ultimately, he ended up snickering.

Sam frowned again. “It’s not funny.”

“Right, yeah,” Daniel said between chuckles. “Not funny.”

He was still laughing when they hung up. Maybe that wasn’t the best plan after all.

When she turned around, the colonel was exiting the hallway, a towel wrapped around his waist, and she watched him head straight for the backyard door. He seemed antsy.

“Sir?” she asked.

He grimaced. “I gotta-”

Thank God he realized what he was doing before he’d even grabbed the door handle.

“Don’t…” He held up a finger in her direction. “Don’t. Say. Anything.”

Sam cleared her throat. “Never crossed my mind, sir.”

He darted back into her room and shut the door.

\---

“So how did it happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did it happen?”

“No idea.”

“What did you do?”

“Not a clue.”

Daniel’s skeptical gaze flitted between Sam and Colonel O’Neill. “So you just went to bed and he woke up human. You didn’t have to do anything at all.”

“Nope,” Sam replied.

Beside her, Teal’c raised an eyebrow, because of course Daniel couldn’t resist taking a detour to grab Teal’c on the way over. Sam was just glad the colonel wasn’t running around the house in a towel anymore.

“Huh,” Daniel finally said. “Well, it’s been seven days. I guess the people of 992 find significance in the number 7.”

No one in the room really cared about the hows or the whys. They’d figure it out later and their relief, while restrained, was palpable.

“God, it feels good to have hands again.” The colonel stretched his arms out and flexed his fingers energetically.

“I’m just glad there won’t be any more paws digging into my back,” Daniel crankily mused. He scowled at the colonel, but the colonel just smiled.

“You loved it,” he teased.

“I did not,” Daniel shot back. “Those afternoons sucked.”

“Yeah, but now that I have arms and hands and legs again, that means I get to do… this.” The colonel jumped to Daniel’s side and slung an arm around his neck, getting him into a flawless headlock. Daniel yelled and flailed in frustration as the colonel ruffled his hair mercilessly.

Sam rolled her eyes, unsuccessfully hiding a smile. “I’m gonna go get ready,” she said, leaving Teal’c to deal with the colonel’s temporary descent into adolescence. Teal’c seemed very content just standing back and watching it, however.

When she reemerged, Daniel and Teal’c had already gone ahead. She found the colonel in the kitchen, studying a can of dog food.

“I _thought_ this tasted like lamb,” he said. “Fancy.”

Sam smiled, then winced. “Was it any good, though?”

The colonel seemed to consider this seriously. “Yeah,” he admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “It was pretty good.” He had a look on his face not unlike the one he had any time somebody mentioned Hathor. “We really spoil dogs.”

She certainly spoiled him, but she’d have plenty of time to lord it over him later.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked.

He looked down at his shoes - his mismatched shoes. She suspected Daniel had done that deliberately, not out of carelessness.

“If you’re ready, I’m ready,” the colonel replied.

Scooping her keys from the counter, she headed into the foyer with him not far behind.

“Carter,” he said, just as she was about to open the door.

She turned around. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, a small smile on his lips, and a look in his eyes that let her know he was just as thankful as she was that he was back. She smiled in return.

“I guess this means I’m no longer in command of SG-1.” All things considered, it was a statement Sam was nothing but relieved to be making.

The colonel shrugged. “You’ll get it back one of these days.” He said it with such conviction that her cheeks warmed, just a little, and she couldn’t help but duck her head in a lousy attempt to hide her smile.

“I’m gonna miss getting my ears scratched, though,” the colonel suddenly said. That moment didn’t last long.

Sam made a big show of rolling her eyes. “I think you owe me for that. For a very long time.”

To his credit, he looked a little panicked at the thought, and Sam waited until they were halfway down the walk to exact her revenge.

“Want me to put the window down for you?” She made no attempt to hide her smirk.

The colonel’s eyes narrowed, but he looked away like he was actually thinking about it.

“Halfway down,” he decided, and then looked up at the sky. “Gonna be a nice day.”

Sam grinned. It certainly was.


End file.
